yeahgr8

I have a question...

I have heard it said in the meetings by people with a number of years that when they see people still out there come into the rooms they are glad because it keeps them sober...usually saying there but for the grace of God...then leaving the meeting and off they go...

I sat with a newcomer a couple of months ago for a coffee and said something i had heard along the lines of i'm really glad we are having this coffee as it is people like you, still out there, that keep me sober and it didn't sit that well with me...i was just repeating what i had been told (like a kid, what do i know?!)...

I guess i just questioned why i would need to see someone else that is still out there to keep me sober? I understand that working with newcomers, giving away what has been so freely given to us etc is the way of AA and i do get the sponsor getting as much as the sponsee out of that relationship...

'Seeing that guy has kept me sober for today' is another one i hear all the time, they don't actually talk to them...is this because we need a constant reminder of where we came from because the disease is cunning, baffling and powerful...

Looking for some opinions on this, maybe it's because i'm in early sobriety and closer to my last drink than say someone with 10 years and over time it would be easier to forget?

Sugah

Maybe when we see folks still sick and suffering, it reminds us how selfish it would be to pick up a drink and thus have nothing to offer them.

Peace & Love,
Sugah

shaun00

personally.........i think its b.s

i dont need to see a active drunk to think im glad im not drinking today or that will keep me sober.
theres only one person that keeps me sober and it isnt me..

sure i feel empathy.......but it doesnt and wont keep me sober today..
i dont feel gratitude thats not me.........i feel saddeness.

if seeing drunks in a mess could keep me sober i would have sobered up years and years ago.

the privelege to share a solution.........a way out........is my only objective.

CarolD

....sharing with newcomers does not keep me recovered.
My daily committment to God and AA does.

Sharing with new members does give me purpose
ie: carrying the message
and joy......to see them find hope and healing.

Probably not what the BB says but it's my experience.

leec

that's just great to know that if i go to my first meeting I'll be stared at as a loser by all these holier-than-thou sober people thinking "man am i glad i'm not him"

Music

When I read Bill's story in the Big Book, I'm reminded that the reason I am supposed to carry the message to the still suffering alcoholic is two fold. Hopefully something I say will ring true with him and secondly, I will stay sober in the process. Leec, if you haven't been to an AA meeting yet, please don't pass judgment without evidence. I've never heard anyone, at least the people I associate with in AA, refer to anyone as a loser. If you're a loser, it's only because you think you are. And I might add, that your attitude if not changed, will end up killing you, if not physically, in so many other ways you can't imagine. I'm not immune to that next drink any more than a person with a week in the program. Alcoholism is cunning, baffling and powerful and if I don't get a dose of reminders of what it used to be like, something just might happen that will make me think a drink is a good idea. Hasn't happened yet, but I never say never.

yeahgr8

No offence but before i would not have had to meet you in an AA meeting to think that, i was the most arrogant, obnoxious idiot out there! You will get a very warm welcome in AA from people who genuinely want to help you out if you look for them in the rooms...at the end of the day try going up to a non-alcoholic mature person and explaining your predicament and see how much sympathy and empathy you get there, so where you gonna go anyway?!

Why not check out a meeting for yourself and give us some feedback...what you got to lose:-)

CarolD

Hi again Lee.....

Please do go and check out AA meetings for yourself.
I did a bit of "meeting shopping" before I
found one that clicked for me.

When I quit drinking...I too lived alone and was single.
In AA I found a host of new friends who were
interested in being winners over alcohol. ...

AA has been an awesome adventure in sober living.
And it can be for you too!

BadCompany

Fear doesn't keep me sober. God keeps me sober. Working with the newcomer keeps my program fresh, fluid and moving forward. The man that is still suffering reminds me how much work there still is to do.

keithj

No, I don't think so. My Step 1 experience has deepened over time. I still connect emotionally and mentally to it. Time away from a drink has nothing to do with it.

I gave a Step 1 share at a workshop a couple months ago. It had nothing to do with being reminded by the newcomer of how bad it was. It had a lot to do with being powerless, hopeless, and doomed.

CStyle

I know for me it is vital to see the effects of active alcoholism and addiction in peoples lives.

I got sober when I was 23, I will be 32 in a few days. My built in forgeter (alcoholism) likes to tell me that maybe it wasn't so bad, and maybe I was just being young, and maybe I can drink like a normal person now.

I don't know about you, but I need these constant reminders to keep me grounded. I love working with new comers and seeing their lives change. I also get a first hand chance to see why I am doing what I am doing, and the results that people get from old behavior. Old behavior gives you old results.

Today I am not better than or less than anyone else. It is that I am granted a daily reprieve from my active alcoholism, insanity, and chaos that is contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition.

When I see a new comer in the insanity of their addiction, I state "but for the Grace of God there go I" because I know without a doubt that I deserve to be going through what they are going through and that I am only one drink away from being right where they are. To me this is a statement of gratitude, nothing more.

yeahgr8

Keep the sentiment that they hope that the person is desperate and in pain is so that they are ready and willing to take necessary steps to get sober, before i was at that stage i was not willing at all, no matter what i said at the time. It's like i said before if i could go back 8 years, to the day i remember as vivid as it was yesterday standing on a cliff top in Gib thinking i am in trouble here, i would have no chance persuading myself to go to AA and take the steps but i may be able to explain that it would be better to get on with the drinking and not take breaks or try to control it to get him to that point where i would ask for help...

On this note though i have never heard someone say to a newcomer that they hope their lives suck, well not on the first meeting anyway...maybe your guy has got good at ducking!

The following member with considerable time sober said that he was glad when he sees people relapse because they teach him what not to do

This i dont get but each to their own, if it keeps them sober then great...there are some great videos of drunks making complete asses of themselves on youtube maybe you could suggest that to them, if they can't make a meeting;-)

RobbyRobot

It didn't sit well with you is your gratitude standing up and defending your need to be of service to others, and defending the newcomers right to dignity within the fellowship while receiving service. Its a comfort to know you have a good measure of empathetic grace for your brothers and sisters, Yeahgr.

It's true nontheless, that prideful members, usually with some time invested in their abstinence, boast that steppin' the newcomer is somehow a priviledged rite of passage for the more accomplished mature member. Not. Nothing there but shame and resentments for their own twisted path to non-recovery, and for good reasons. They cannot shake off the humilation of their own blindness to their own condition and situation. None so blind as those who will not see, and deaf those who will not hear.

Newcomers are natural prey to the boastings and it can appear from a distance that service work is being done, but really only personalities before principalities is ruling the encounters and setting the agendas between the "we-have-it' camps and the "we-have-it-not camps."

For me, the newcomers obvious needs are a testament to my awareness and appreciation of my humility and my gratitude as i endevour to be of fellowship service because to keep what we have we must give it away. I don't need any one to suffer for me to give away what we have already together. My being of service is not me reaching down and preaching to the choir about how grand life is up here where I belong. Being of service is a priviledge because I can then return the gift that was unconditionally given to me; and not just handed to me either, but given to me with the honor of enlightenment that to be of good service one must be a servant to the moment and the cause with a purposeful heart and mind surrended to sobriety.

We all have our place in the fellowship, we all have a seat at the table, we all have an expectation that AA will be there for us. Service work towards the newcomer seems obvious of course, but for the more accomplished member they also often require service work even if in a different manner, else they too can fall by the wayside and get lost in the fog of becoming sober. None are so high above their troubles that they can't fall to their own death. There is pleasant safety in good fellowship.

There is plenty of myth within the rooms of AA. Accepting that and loving our brothers and sisters as we love ourselves truthfully is the remedy best served in a fellowship of gratitude, remembrance, and rigorous honesty.


RobbyRobot

shaun00

say it...........say it every meeting...............and say it loud..

RobbyRobot

I don't know you, CStyle. And I appreciate you are speaking from your own ESH of course. It's just the quote of your posting I have set above has so many elements in it that just cry out for me to say this:

--Sober alcoholics "don't deserve" to be going through the insanity of their addiction. Sobriety is the cure for that same insanity and none of us who have -- the cure -- deserve the insanity. That's just how it works.

--if a so-called "sober alcoholic" is only one drink away from being right where they [a new comer] are [using and abusing alcohol insanely] then that sober alcoholic is not sober in any meaningful way. One-drink-away describes abstinence and not sobriety. Sobriety is a life experienced without not only alcohol but without all the garbage of living a drunk existence. Sobriety is not just a flimsy to-drink or not-to-drink daily choice or chore to be reasoned out come what may.

--to me the above [your] statements have nothing to do with gratitude and everything to do with pride and prejudice against not the newcomer him or herself, but to alcoholism and sobriety. May want to look at that...

No offence intended, CStyle. Just my ESH.

Cheers!!

RobbyRobot

Mark75

Yea, that shiite isn't in the Big Book I read.

... I think that's the best use of youtube I can think of!

I can't quote it exactly off hand.... But I would read out of the Big Book about no matter how far down you are or have come... there is a life that is better than your wildest dreams waiting for you... Welcome to our fellowship... oh, and here is a book that tells you how this program works... and not only that, we will help you through the steps and show you the beauty of what's in these pages...

Something like that....

Mark

sev

It's not cross talk if you're not interrupting and your not directly firing at them by name. I was just having this convo with one in my group. He reminded me...everyone in the room has a purpose. There are those who have serenity that you want to be like and hang out with, and there are people who show you what not to be like. I listened to a speaker tape yesterday that was great. He says something like if you had cancer, would you walk into the children's cancer ward and tell them that they don't know what real cancer is like because you are older than them? That you're glad they didn't have to experience real suffering like you did?? Same difference. I don't say that to newcomers because it is ridiculous. I don't hope anyone's life sucks. I do hope that I can share what I have with them to help them. Trust God, Clean House, HELP OTHERS...it doesn't say Insult others or tell others they are less than because they are out there and I am not. I show empathy because I am God's kid, just like the person who is still out there. I'm no better. I am charged with giving back what was given to me to keep the program going and to build on my serenity. But that's just my experience.

Mark75

Yea, the promises... My home group and the other group I attend don't read them, I always like it when they are read at a meeting...

Mark

shaun00

Its called the moral high ground.......its the perfect place to hang out if you wanna stay sick.

i stopped drinking once for about a month..ish............the wife said "you might as well drink cos you sure act like you are"..
i learnt the difference between recovering and recovered.

newcomers dont need to be belittled by fake gurus.......its like water off a duckS back anyhow..and in my experience its as useful as a chocolate T pot.

RobbyRobot

Don't create crosstalk at meetings unless it has already been agreed with by the group involved. Otherwise, you will be shut down with no remedy. It rarely will be agreed with, so don't hold your breath, lol. Even then, agreed crosstalk isn't really crosstalk, more like allowed disagreement to be offered politely and nicely. heh heh. Don't go there....

It is allowed though to follow through with what someone has just said offering your own ESH and from a different perspective that draws the group to consider a differing experience. When done skillfully and with grace, accomplishes much more then rogue crosstalk.

And there is always speaking privately to whoever you will, and nothing there can be considered crosstalk either.

Your enthusiasum for the newcomer to hear the message of hope is very correct and honorable and I encourage you to not be dismayed at members who suffer from ignorance when they attempt to "help" the newcomer in ways that really just don't help anybody much.

"if you're new i hope your life sucks" statements can perhaps be refuted by following with "if your new and think your life sucks now, just wait and you'll find out from working the program that those days of stinkin' thinking are falling more and more behind you each day."

So have a good one!! Dance, dance, dance.... for the joys of freedom!! Yaaaay!!!

RR